[2022 US Symposium] #65 - Smoking Conventions

[zhuk (Oleg Zhuk)]

Good questions

1. I don’t think we really need one common ancestor for various type of smokers. We proceedeed with oversimplification with the whole model

@Christian_Reich

• We treat tobacco, smoking and nicotine dependence as synonyms. Even though there are electronic cigarettes, which really are not smoke, in reality these are used that way.

So if your data is granular enough, use specific type of smokers. If not, use Cigarette smoker. If you need all smokers, just pick all of them while building your concept set / cohort.

2. Do we have data granular enough?

Let’s assume patient smoked cigarettes for 5 years, then switched to moist tobacco for 2 years, then smoked 2 packs a single day for some reason, and then switched to something else. Would it be accurately reflected in the data? How should we treat this patient? Yes, Tobacco or its derivatives user
is the right concept.

Now never users. We can name it a feature of the model. You no longer need to care about these small differences.

@Maria_Rogozhkina

A similar situation arises with the concept Never used tobacco or its derivatives. This concept should not be equated with “Never smoked tobacco.” There may be individuals who have never smoked tobacco but have used other forms of tobacco or derivatives.

If the patient never smoked, but used other types of tobacco, he/she is a Tobacco or its derivatives user, period.

“Never smoked” was included in the synonyms list because it is a very common name to discuss tobacco behaviour in clinics and because logically, every smoker used tobacco. So
IF Never used tobacco THEN Never smoked.
It is a small change. We can remove the synonym if it feels confusing.

3. Personally I think that we lose too much here. We already spotted some analysis where these concepts could have been helpful. Let’s here from the Community.